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A college degree is a lousy investment

Are we addicted to higher education like we are to opiates?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brenna...-prescribing-selective-colleges/#36b7584f198c

As someone posted Malcolm Gladwell's youtube video earlier, you shouldn't go to the best school you can get into.

My question to author is "but what about Americans being behind our foreign counterparts?" You can't chill and excel at the same time.
Demanding Indian and Asian parents push their kids to excellence, and they surpass American kids regularly. See Spelling Bee.

So obviously there is a fine line, but where to draw it is murky. I think as a parent your job is to learn you child's potential, and strive to make them fulfill that potential.
 
Reasonable suggestions. The problem isn’t higher education but the type of higher education and why.

I don’t like this lazy “higher education is like the _______ crisis.” I guess we’ve moved on from the housing market crisis.
 
So....what's your plan? How do the poors get an education?
 
Subsidizing college tuition has the same inherent flaws as subsidizing health insurance. If the government is going to pay for it, the government should have greater control (near total control IMO) of the price, otherwise you have rampant unchecked cost inflation, as we do. Because the government does not cover ALL of the cost, that rampant inflation drives extreme private debt at the margins, and you have a fucking vulturous cretin private finance industry to take advantage of that artificially created financial need.
 
You think the people involved in these decisions aren't invested in Sallie Mae? Fuck, that's why coke dealers give you a free taste. They are creating a financial crisis and profiting off of it.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Subsidizing college tuition has the same inherent flaws as subsidizing health insurance. If the government is going to pay for it, the government should have greater control (near total control IMO) of the price, otherwise you have rampant unchecked cost inflation, as we do. Because the government does not cover ALL of the cost, that rampant inflation drives extreme private debt at the margins, and you have a fucking vulturous cretin private finance industry to take advantage of that artificially created financial need.
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OK. So you've got a plan. Anyone else?
 
palmab03 said:
You can learn anything you need to off the internet these days
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Not at all. You can *find* anything on the internet, that much is true. *learning* and *knowing what* to learn are quite a bit more challenging. Not everyone is clever, motivated, or focused enough to become a lectro-level autodidact
 
wakephan09 said:
Not at all. You can *find* anything on the internet, that much is true. *learning* and *knowing what* to learn are quite a bit more challenging. Not everyone is clever, motivated, or focused enough to become a lectro-level autodidact
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Someone reputable will put the two together in short enough time that trying to solve the problem in other ways is probably a waste of time
 
Because that’s what we want, a nation of people who just learn stuff off the internet.

That’s basically what we have minus a formal education system.
 
PhDeac said:
OK. So you've got a plan. Anyone else?
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1. I agree with myDeaconmyhand.
2. Repeal the law that makes education debt not dis-chargeable in bankruptcy. Lending institutions incur risk in every other loan. With risk free loans, prices soar. Include inherent risk and interest rates will rise some, but prices will go down (or at least level off. We've already said that not everybody needs to go to college, and repealing this law will bring market forces to bear. The marginal student who wants an arts degree on loan will be told "no." Better to tell them early rather than let them be a barista with six figure debt.
3. States with a lottery should do what Georgia does with their Hope Scholarship. I mean, if you're going to effectively tax the poor (albeit voluntarily) with a lottery, you should at least give their kids an opportunity to go to college and learn some math.
4. Malcolm Gladwell did a great series (episodes 4-6) on college finances: identifying poor college bound youth early and trying to keep them on the college path through high school, the amenities escalation to attract the rich to subsidize the poor (some schools are better at this than others), the uber wealthy need to give their $$ to schools that need it and not just the Ivies. http://revisionisthistory.com/seasons?selected=season-1
The good news is there are schools that really take educating the poor seriously.
 
I agree although not totally for #2.

The first solution should be to improve K-12 education by strengthening public education. Include more life skills, entrepreneurship, and career and technical education programs throughout schooling. States can make time by getting rid of most of the BS testing.

If we graduate kids who have the skills to be functioning adults, who can start a business, and who have workforce ready skills, fewer of them will want or need to go to college right out of high school. And if and when they go to college, they’ll know what they want to do and waste little time doing it.

When don’t need to prepare kids to get a job. We need to prepare them to create jobs. Many kids have a natural entrepreneurial spirit. Lemonade stands. Paper routes. Cutting lawns. They watch Doc McStuffins and YouTubers who are basically their own small businesses.

That’s why it’s heartbreaking to see hateful white people call the cops on the 12 year old boy who started a lawn mowing business or the 8 year old girl who was selling water bottles.

Our public education system needs to teach all kids what rich white kids learn from their parents. Make that happen and poor kids and minority kids won’t be forced to make up the gaps with higher education (even though we know it doesn’t make up the gaps).

The other big thing is states need to get back in the business of funding higher education.
 
The democratic idea of just more education ignores the fact that half the kids are born as dumbasses.

Need to make the coal workers and plumbers and steel workers have jobs too. That’s where Trump’s message resonates, when it should be the Democrats’ message.
 
That’s just wrong at least the first part.

Nobody is born a dumbass. The biggest flaw of the educational system is that it labels some kids as dumbasses because they don’t demonstrate their knowledge of a few subjects in a few ways. And they remain dumbasses because the system doesn’t recognize their talents and doesn’t teach all student the types of skills they need.

But Trump does appeal to people who think they need to be beholden to a benevolent wealthy class in order to survive.
 
awaken said:
Are we addicted to higher education like we are to opiates?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brenna...-prescribing-selective-colleges/#36b7584f198c

As someone posted Malcolm Gladwell's youtube video earlier, you shouldn't go to the best school you can get into.

My question to author is "but what about Americans being behind our foreign counterparts?" You can't chill and excel at the same time.
Demanding Indian and Asian parents push their kids to excellence, and they surpass American kids regularly. See Spelling Bee.

So obviously there is a fine line, but where to draw it is murky. I think as a parent your job is to learn you child's potential, and strive to make them fulfill that potential.
Click to expand...

Would love to see the a study done on salary of those spelling bee nerds at age 40. I bet its not awesome.

AnonymousDeac said:
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Nothing was going to save this guy. He had bad idea jeans perm sewed on.

PhDeac said:
So....what's your plan? How do the poors get an education?
Click to expand...

Govt AND industry subsidized vocational schools/community colleges that have direct ties to factories/employers. Ex: have a vocational school in that teaches kids how to run the automation machines in the BMW factory and also teaches how to repair complex car systems and computers for both the cars and the robots. Factory then has direct trained labor. We need to narrow post HS education to vocation, or really create a new vocational path to create more electricians, plumbers, builders, programmers, car repair. Teach people skill and trade that they can immediately use, or worse case scenario, open up their own shop. Industry will participate. To me this seems like the best way to grow the middle class.

wakephan09 said:
Not at all. You can *find* anything on the internet, that much is true. *learning* and *knowing what* to learn are quite a bit more challenging. Not everyone is clever, motivated, or focused enough to become a lectro-level autodidact
Click to expand...

Agree. You can look up a million things, read a million points of view, but there is nothing on the web that synthesizes all of the movements/arguments or theses on a subject from the last 200 years or so and then contextualizes them and puts them in their place, teaches them as a whole. That is what a professor with 20 years of experience can add by curating a curriculum. Without all that, ppl are like "Man that Marx guy was ONTO SOMETHING!1!"
 
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